film studies at the university of colorado boulder.
Historical and material approaches to the reuse, reformation and reconstitution of existing sources from Cubism to PostModernism. Originality, appropriation, authorship, intellectual property, found footage, home movies, readymades, remixes, copyleft and free culture.

Friday, December 6, 2013

WEEK FOURTEEN: Photoshop skillz

Artist Shepard Fairey did *not* make his famous Obama/HOPE poster in Photoshop, or at least not entirely---he did research for images and downloaded one of them from the internets, which led to all the trouble. When Fairey's distributed poster caught on like wildfire soon enough the AP came along and sued him for copyright infringment (even though the photo in question was taken by Mannie Garcia). He immediately counter-sued claiming that his use of the images falls squarely within the boundaries of transformation and fair use. They settled out of court and Faireys image for Obamas campaign has spawned thousands of versions and remixes, like this one or any of these. Well we watched a Photoshop tutorial on how to make a graphic design image like Fairey's, which was inspired by artist Barbara Kruger which was inspired by the Russian Constructivists for whom art was a practice for social change. We started with our own faces and the rest is history. Thanks to Eric for the animated gif inspirations and for showing us how to make them in Photoshop!